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Sustainability concerns in conventional meat production have motivated a search for ways to cultivate lab-grown meat. Livestock ranching is environmentally destructive, and also deals in whole animals, of which only parts are consumed, not to mention the deplorable conditions animals may face on factory farms. Cultivated meat, where animal flesh is grown free of a living animal, promises meat-lovers a good burger or chicken patty with a lower environmental footprint and reduced risk of zoonotic diseases.
One of the main challenges in producing cultivated meat has been containing costs while creating something biodegradable with a meat-like texture. Lab-made meat is basically animal cells grown on a supportive scaffold to mimic the connective tissues in traditional meat. A new paper describes a pioneering method for making natural cellular scaffolds for cultivated meat.
“While it’s relatively easy to grow animal cells for mass food production, you need to be able to grow them on something cheap, edible, and that preferably provides a structure that resembles real meat,” explained senior author and regenerative medicine professor Richard Day in a statement.
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Day and his graduate students at the University College London grew a cellulose structure from repurposed brewer’s spent yeast retrieved from the United Kingdom’s Big Smoke Brewing Company. The yeast was used to culture a bacterium—Komagataeibacter xylinus—that’s known for its cellulose production (cellulose is made by plants, but also certain genera of bacteria). The researchers tested the properties of the bacterial cellulose vis-à-vis their similarity to meat.
The scaffold proved worthy for your next lab-cultured burger. The cellulose grown on brewing waste was similar in its texture, structure, and thermal properties to meat products. Furthermore, when animal fibroblasts (meat cells) were introduced to the scaffold, they attached well and started to proliferate.
“In this study we collected a relatively small amount of raw material from one craft brewery that would otherwise have gone to waste. But huge volumes of brewing waste are generated each year that could have a valuable use,” said first author and Ph.D. student Christian Harrison.
Still, the study authors contend that there is more research to do before the bacterial cellulose becomes the medium of choice for cultivated meat. For example, they plan to explore how different meat cell types, different bacterial yeast cultures, and variance between brewers’ yeast batches will affect the final product.
Hey, we’ll drink to that. 
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Lead image: Anna Aybetova / Shutterstock
